Daily Funny

My wife Sylvia and I have been staying at our fancy digs in Boca. The other night, we were on their way out to dinner, when Sylvia comes into the living room and asks, "Darling, do you think this Chanel suit is OK, or should I wear my beaded Oscar de la Renta dress?"
"Wear whatever you like, darling. You look lovely in either."

Ten minutes later, she's back. "Should I wear my diamond earrings or the emerald and sapphire ones you bought me for my birthday?"

"Either one," I say with growing impatience.

Soon she's back, modeling shoes. "Should I wear these Gucci sandals or the Ferragamos?"

"Enough already!" I yelled. "If you don't get your act together right now, we're going to miss the Early Bird Special!"

Five Hundred Posts!

12 things to avoid doing at the last minute.

Waiting until the last minute

In a nutshell: don't.

Bad situations to wait until the last minute:

• Catching a transcontinental flight
• Asking your secret crush to the prom
• Applying for a summer internship
• Setting customer expectations
• Studying for the SATs
• Saving for retirement
• Giving up smoking
• Asking for a raise
• Teaching ethical behavior to your kids
• Winning a primary
• Asking for directions
• Sharing an idea

Daily Funny

This advertisement for an insurance company was put on the back of buses in Amsterdam

Non Sequitur

She Still Has A Chance?!

Flower of Scotland

O Flower of Scotland,
When will we see
Your like again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit Hill and Glen,
And stood against him,
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
Tae think again.

The Hills are bare now,
And Autumn leaves
lie thick and still,
O'er land that is lost now,
Which those so dearly held,
That stood against him,
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
Tae think again.

Those days are past now,
And in the past
they must remain,
But we can still rise now,
And be the nation again,
That stood against him,
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
Tae think again.

0 Flower of Scotland,
When will we see
your like again,
That fought and died for,
Your wee bit Hill and Glen,
And stood against him,
Proud Edward's Army,
And sent him homeward,
Tae think again.

Priest Kicks FauxNews In The Nuts - Figuratively Unfortunately

Normally I don't have any interest in what FauxNews has to say.
But when I found this unedited interview with a priest I just had to post it.



A swift one to the gonads! Alright, way to go, Father.

Wingnut Shows True Colors

Public relations-officer for Southern Illinois University College Republicans sends misogynistic hate mail and is forced to resign

The Ether says;

I thought you'd like this story from Feminsting.com

Feministing recently received some really badly written hate mail, something which is not in itself unusual. This time, however, it was sent from a school address, and it turns out that it had come from the public relations officer of the Southern Illinois University College Republicans. That's right: a public relations officer. He's obviously not very good at his job.

In the comments section the secretary of the organization (who seems like a very decent person) came in and apologized profusely, and even made the culprit do the same. He has resigned from his post.

Some people might argue that there's a right to privacy here, but when you send extremely hateful mail over the internet from your school address, and especially when you're a public relations officer, you pretty much give up that right.

The internet is full of real bastards who posts hateful things all the time, and seemingly takes pleasure in hurting people. It's nice to see this one get his comeuppance.

Here's the email sent by the now-ex-public relations officer for for Southern Illinois University College Republicans:

"Men are better than women look at the comparison in IQ men are scientifically proven to have a higher IQ by roughly 5 points, or 5% you cannot dispute science sorry and if you want a much better website than your shitty one you might want to go to [redacted]. I think you would gain a lot more knowledge from that website and you might learn about the truth that way you would not be so stupid and ignorant you stupid cunts."

*****

Would that they all receive their comeuppance!
The wingnuts howl and bray at the moon, attacking and reviling everything and everyone who does not toe the dogmatic line - then whine that they are the 'victims' of 'attack' when someone stands up to them and says ... NO.
It has begun to change ... people are tired of the wingnuts and more and more are standing up to say ... NO and doing so in a very loud voice - too bad the wingnuts are deaf.

This is how the cabal treats our troops!

Forced to leave the combat zone after his two brothers died in the Iraq war, Army Spc. Jason Hubbard faced another battle once he returned home: The military cut off his family's health care, stopped his G.I. educational subsidies and wanted him to repay his sign-up bonus.

It wasn't until Hubbard petitioned his local congressman that he was able to restore some of his benefits.

Now that congressman, Rep. Devin Nunes, is leading an effort to pass a bill that would ensure basic benefits to all soldiers who are discharged under an Army policy governing sole surviving siblings and children of soldiers killed in combat. The rule is a holdover from World War II meant to protect the rights of service people who have lost a family member to war.

"I felt as if in some ways I was being punished for leaving even though it was under these difficult circumstances," Hubbard told The Associated Press. "The situation that happened to me is not a one-time thing. It's going to happen to other people, and to have a law in place is going to ease their tragedy in some way."

Hubbard, 33, and his youngest brother, Nathan, enlisted while they were still grieving for their brother, Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard, who was 22 when he was killed in a 2004 bomb explosion in Ramadi.

At their request, the pair were assigned to the same unit, the 3rd Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, and deployed to Iraq the next year.

In August, 21-year-old Cpl. Nathan died when his Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Kirkuk. Jason was part of the team assigned to remove his comrades' bodies from the wreckage.

Hubbard accompanied his little brother's body on a military aircraft to Kuwait, then on to California. He kept steady during Nathan's burial at Clovis Cemetery, standing in dress uniform between his younger brothers' graves as hundreds sobbed in the heat.

But Hubbard broke his silence when he found his wife, pregnant with their second child, had been cut off from the transitional health care the family needed to ease back to civilian life after he was discharged in October.

Quote of the Day

“Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the “Keating Five,” had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics — do you think it’s possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been? Possible?”

~ Crooks and Liars Blog

The Strip and Dip Specialist

SKINNY-DIPPING at an Edinburgh beauty spot just wasn't daring enough for 23-year-old Jackie Brown – so she's decided to do it 138 times.

The keen swimmer (pictured above) is preparing to spend the summer getting closer to nature by taking a dip in the nude in all of Scotland's major lochs. She will swim around ten metres in all the lochs – including Loch Lomond and Loch Ness – to raise around £3000 for breast cancer charities.

She will be photographed at each location for a series of pictures to go on sale when she completes the task.

Miss Brown, who lives in Barony Street, has already had a trial run for her intensive three-week charity swim in the summer by plunging into the freezing Duddingston Loch.

She got rid of her inhibitions and took the plunge, much to the surprise of a nature-lover who happened to be looking through his binoculars at the time.

But it was realising just how freezing Scottish waters are that gave the Australian the biggest shock. She said: "As with all good ideas, it was thought up in the pub. I left Edinburgh to go home for a while last year and I said my biggest regret was not skinny dipping in the lochs, so it all stemmed from there.

"Saturday was my first dip and it lasted a maximum of three minutes. When I got home, I spent the rest of the night in bed with a fever and I must admit I thought then 'What am I letting myself in for?'. But I'm not worried about it, I'm just really excited."

Miss Brown, originally from the Australian city of Perth, is going to seek the advice of her doctor before embarking on the potentially dangerous swimathon.

She said: "I'll be careful about it and make sure I'm eating right and that I have lots of blankets with me. I've had my injections and I won't be putting my head under the water." She will be starting her challenge in the Capital on July 7, then heading up north.

She estimates she will take in just over six lochs a day to complete the task in three weeks. She will be accompanied by her friend, amateur photographer Jenny Humberstone, who will be taking snaps at each location.

As well as raising sponsorship money through the swimathon, Miss Brown hopes the "artsy" photos will make some money when they go on sale. She plans to get a stall during the Edinburgh Festival to sell the photos.

Miss Brown, who teaches theatre skills in schools, welcomes supporters along the way but says she will only strip off at secluded parts of the lochs so as not to offend anyone.

She added: "The guy with the binoculars must have wondered what we were doing, but he never asked for an explanation and we never offered one. We just did what we came to do and left."

Miss Brown plans to split the money she raises between a number of breast cancer charities after she saw the illness strike some of her friends' mothers.

Angela Kilday, spokesperson for Cancer Research UK, said: "We invest some £27 million in Scotland annually. Without the support of individuals like Jackie, this vital cancer research work would not be able to continue."

*****

Want to check out more about Scots and Scotland go to Scotsman.com
Direct link to story above here.
Or find out all about the Scots and Scotland at Electric Scotland

Daily Funny

Jose and Carlos are both con artists who pose as panhandlers.
They panhandle on different areas of town, and although Carlos panhandles just as long as Jose he only collects 2 to 3 dollars every day.
Jose on the other hand, brings home a suitcase FULL of $10 dollar bills, drives a Mercedes, lives in a mortgage free house and has a lot of money to spend.
Carlos says to Jose 'Hey… I work just as long and hard as you do, so how do you bring home a suitcase full of $10 dollar bills every day?'

Jose says 'Look at your sign; what does it say?'
Carlos sign reads 'I have no work, a wife and 6 kids to support.'

Jose says 'No wonder you only get $2-3 dollars!'
Carlos says 'So what does your sign say?'

Jose shows Carlos his sign... It reads 'I only need another $10.00 dollars to move back to Mexico’

The RIAA's lawsuit against a homeless man isn't going according to plan!

The RIAA's file-sharing lawsuit against a homeless man has run into some snags:

In Warner v. Berry, where the RIAA was suing a man who lives in a homeless shelter, the Magistrate Judge -- Hon. Kevin Nathaniel Fox -- recommended that the plaintiffs' application for a default judgment be denied, and that the plaintiffs be ordered to show cause why they should not be sanctioned under Rule 11. The Judge agreed that the default judgment should be denied, but chose not to sanction plaintiffs' attorneys...

The Magistrate Judge found that "[b]y affixing the summons on April 9, 2007, the plaintiffs demonstrated they never intended to conduct 'a thorough address investigation ...' because they employed the 'affix and mail' method of service without exercising due diligence to effect personal service pursuant to CPLR s 308(1) and (2)." Magistrate Judge Fox concluded that Plaintiffs' representation to this Court to the effect that they intended to conduct an investigation to locate Defendant's current address implicated Fed.R.Civ.P. 11(b) because it was made for the improper purpose of unnecessary delay.

We can only hope that this won't prejudice the court in the matter of Warner, Electra et al Versus Charitable Hospice for Dying, Helpless, Starving Children Who Rescue Puppies From Burning Buildings and Volunteer at the Old Folks Home.

(No, that is not sarcasm you detect in the sentence above.)

The Zen of the Spiritual

Surprised ... Yes and No.

A Mexican federal official says the police chief of the border city of Reynosa has been arrested for allegedly protecting members of the Gulf drug cartel.

The official says Chief Juan Muniz will be flown to Mexico City on Thursday to be questioned by organized crime investigators.

Muniz has been arrested by federal agents in Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the case.

Reynosa city officials have issued a news release saying Muniz was arrested Thursday afternoon. Muniz could not be immediately reach for comment and it was unclear if he had a lawyer.

The Gulf cartel is based in Tamaulipas state, where Reynosa is located.
*****

And this surprises me, how?
Okay, the Mexicans actually arresting the chief does - the fact the chief was fronting for a drug cartel ... nope, not surprising at all.

He was "depressed".

Relatives of a Fresno high school student who was shot to death after he attacked a police officer with a baseball bat questioned the department's version of events Thursday and said the depressed teenager never received the help he needed from school officials.

Jesus "Jesse" Carrizales, a 17-year-old sophomore, died Wednesday of a single bullet to the chest, fired by a school resources officer, Junus Perry, whom police said Carrizales had ambushed in a crowded outdoor corridor of Roosevelt High School. Officers found a small knife protruding from Carrizales' pocket, police said.

Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said Thursday that the 6-foot-tall, 250-pound teen sought out the violent confrontation, which he called "a case of suicide by cop."

It wasn't the first time Carrizales had a run-in with police. In 2005, while in middle school, the student was cited for concealing a small knife in his backpack, Dyer said. Relatives said the knife belonged to a friend.

The next year, however, Carrizales' 10 brothers and sisters noticed he had become withdrawn, and the family decided he would do better at an alternative school where he could pursue independent study. He was prescribed Lexapro and Geodon, drugs used to treat depression and bipolar disorder, and in January he transferred to Roosevelt High, said his sister Elisa Ortega.

"He was a boy who needed help," said Ortega, 27. "He was depressed and he was on medication and the school knew it, so maybe they could have treated things differently."

Carrizales' family said the officer didn't have to shoot the teen, and questioned authorities' version of events.

"He never said he wanted to die or anything close to that," Ortega said. "They didn't have to kill him. The Taser guns, the batons they have, that should have been enough to calm the situation down."

Dyer said after Carrizales surprised the officer from behind and struck him in the head with the 21-inch bat, Perry feared for his life.

The officer fell down dazed, and reached for the gun in his hip holster, but the clip fell out.

As the student came at him again, yelling obscenities and raising the bat above his head, Perry grabbed a semiautomatic handgun he carried as backup in an ankle holster. He fired one round, Dyer said.

"It is unfortunate that the officer was put in a position where he had to take a student's life," Dyer told reporters Thursday. "Had he not defended himself there could have been further tragedy."

At least five students and a probation officer on campus witnessed the incident, police said. No one else was injured.

Fresno Unified School District spokeswoman Susan Bedi said a confidentiality agreement kept her from commenting on Carrizales' history in local schools.

Acting Superintendent Ruth Quinto said in a statement that the district was proud of how staff and students handled the situation.

"They have shown great strength and maturity," Quinto said. "We are continuing and will continue for as long as necessary to support them in any way that we can."

Carrizales' siblings described him as a lighthearted aspiring chef who preferred to play video games with his young cousins rather than take part in adult conversations.

"He was more of a kid himself. He was a momma's boy," said another sister, Irene Ortega, 25, speaking outside her mother's modest Fresno home. "We just want to know what happened before that incident to see what made him do what police say he did."

Perry is recovering at home after being treated for a 2-inch gash on the right side of his head, Dyer said. He is on administrative leave while the department reviews his conduct in Fresno's fifth officer-involved shooting this year.

*****

Ok, I am no wingnut fundie but come on people sometime it is not the boogey-man and sometime it is, but the continuous stream of he was - depressed, sick, slow, retarded, high, drunk, etc., ad infinitum - (take your pick), is getting a bit thin.

Which is making legitimate cases of depression, illness, retardation, etc., fall to the wayside as when the boy cried wolf twice and the men came to kill the wolf carrying off the boy's sheep and there was no wolf, so when the boy cried wolf the third time the men ignored him and the wolf ate all the boy's sheep.

Tourists 1 Wildlife 0

News from the wild that isn't good at all.

Group of Gibraltar's Barbary apes to be killed

A renegade group of Gibraltar's Barbary apes has annoyed residents so much that authorities announced plans Thursday to kill them.

A cluster of 25 Barbary apes - a species of monkey usually weighing about 15-25 pounds - moved to a popular beach-side area some months ago where they have been stealing food, entering rooms through open windows and harassing tourists, officials said.

The territory's tourism minister, Ernest Britto, has decided to kill the beach dwelling group, government spokesman Francis Cantos said.

"I can confirm that tourism minister Britto has decided to issue a license for a cull," said Cantos.

"The decision was not taken lightly. It is a last resort," Britto told the Gibraltar Chronicle newspaper.

The newspaper said two monkeys have already been captured and given lethal injections.

The pack, part of the territory's population of around 200, invaded a sandy beach area called Catalan Bay where they remained because they were able to rummage for food. The area is popular with tourists and has a luxury hotel.

Britto said he determined that the monkeys posed a danger to public health.

The animals mainly inhabit the high ground of Gibraltar, a British colony off Spain's southern tip.

The British Army, which is responsible for their care, has in the past often had to replenish Gibraltar's population with monkeys from Africa. Barbary apes also live in Morocco and north Algeria.

Polygamist sect hearing in Texas descends into farce

A court hearing to decide the fate of the 416 children swept up in a raid on a West Texas polygamist sect descended into farce Thursday, with hundreds of lawyers in two packed buildings shouting objections and the judge struggling to maintain order.

The case - clearly one of the biggest, most convoluted child-custody hearings in U.S. history - presented an extraordinary tableau: big-city lawyers in suits and mothers in 19th-century, pioneer-style dresses, all packed into a courtroom and a nearby auditorium connected by video.

At issue was an attempt by the state of Texas to strip the parents of custody and place the children in foster homes because of evidence they were being physically and sexually abused by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a renegade Mormon splinter group suspected of forcing underage girls into marriage with older men.

As many feared, the proceedings turned into something of a circus - and a painfully slow one.

By midafternoon only two witnesses had testified, and both only to lay the foundation for documents to be admitted. One witness, a state trooper, was cross-examined by dozens of attorneys, each of them asking the same question of a behalf of a child or parent.

As the afternoon dragged on, no decisions had been made on any of the youngsters' fate.

Texas District Judge Barbara Walther struggled to maintain order as she faced 100 lawyers in her 80-year-old Tom Green County courtroom and several hundred more participating over a grainy video feed from an ornate City Hall auditorium two blocks away.

The hearing disintegrated quickly into a barrage of shouted objections and attempts to file motions, with lawyers for the children objecting to objections made by the parents' attorneys. When the judge sustained an objection to the prolonged questioning the state trooper, the lawyers cheered.

Upon another objection about the proper admission of medical records of the children, the judge threw up her hands.

"I assume most of you want to make the same objection. Can I have a universal, `Yes, Judge'?" she said.

In both buildings, the hundreds of lawyers stood and responded in unison: "Yes, Judge."

But she added to the chaos as well.

Walther refused to put medical records and other evidence in electronic form, which could be e-mailed among the lawyers, because it contained personal information. A courier had to run from the courthouse to the auditorium delivering one document at a time.

"We're going to handle this the best we can, one client at a time," Walther said.

Little evidence had been admitted by midafternoon. The first attempt to admit evidence resulted in an hourlong recess while all the lawyers examined it. The rest of the morning was spent in arguments about whether to admit the medical records of three girls, two 17-year-olds and one 18-year-old.

Department of Public Safety Sgt. Danny Crawford testified to DPS's discovery of a church bishop's records taken from a safe at the ranch that listed about 38 families, some of them polygamous and some that included wives 16 or 17 years old. But under repeated cross-examination, Crawford acknowledged the records contained no evidence of sexual abuse.

State officials asked the judge for permission to conduct genetic testing on the children and adults because of difficulty sorting out the sect's tangled family relationships and matching youngsters with their parents. The judge did not immediately rule.

Amid the shouting and chaos among the lawyers, who came from around Texas to represent the children and parents free of charge, dozens of mothers sat timidly in their long cotton dresses, long underwear even in the spring heat, and braided upswept hair.

In the satellite courtroom, about 175 people strained to see and hear a large projector set up on the auditorium's stage. But the feed was blurry and barely audible.

"I'm not in a position to advocate for anything," complained Susan Hays, the appointed attorney for a 2-year-old sect member.

Outside, where TV satellite trucks lined the street in front of the courthouse's columned facade, a man who said he was an FLDS father waved a photo of himself surrounded by his four children, ranging from a baby to a child of about 9.

"Look, look, look," the father said. "These children are all smiling, we're happy."

Walther signed an emergency order nearly two weeks ago giving the state custody of the children after a 16-year-old girl called an abuse hot line claiming her husband, a 50-year-old member of the sect, beat and raped her. The girl has yet to be identified.

Authorities raided their compound April 3 in the nearby town of Eldorado - a 1,700-acre ranch with a blindingly white limestone temple and log cabin-style houses - and began collecting documents and disk drives that might provide evidence of underage girls being married to adults.

The children, who are being kept in a domed coliseum in San Angelo, range in age from 6 months to 17 years in age. Roughly 100 of them are under 4.

FLDS members deny children were abused and say the state is persecuting them for their faith.

The judge must weigh the allegations of abuse and also decide whether it is in the children's best interest to be placed into mainstream society after they have been told all their lives that the outside world is hostile and immoral.

If the judge gives the state permanent custody of the children, the Texas child services agency will face the enormous task of finding suitable homes. It will also have to decipher brother-sister relationships so that it can try to preserve them.

Over the past two weeks, the agency has relied on volunteers to help feed the children, do their laundry and provide crafts and games for them.

Gov. Rick Perry would not say how much the case is costing the state, but said: "Does the state of Texas have the resources? Absolutely we do."

The sect came to West Texas in 2003, relocating some members from the church's traditional home along the Utah-Arizona state line. Its prophet and spiritual leader, Warren Jeffs, is in prison for forcing an underage girl into marriage in Utah.

*****

P.T. was right! This whole thing is a badly written TV movie (and you know it will be). Barnum wherever you are try not to laugh too hard.

Dangers of Bisphenol A (BPA) From canned food

From TreeHugger.com:

Dangers of Bisphenol A (BPA) From canned food

According to the FDA, 17% of the American diet comes out of cans, and many of those have an epoxy liner made with Bisphenol A, a chemical which can mimic human estrogen and which is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women. While the leaching of BPA from Nalgene water bottles and other polycarbonate bottles is a concern, the danger from canned food may be greater. The Environmental Working Group tested canned food bought across America and found BPA in more than half of them, at levels they call "200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals." There are no standards for BPA; it is allowed to be put in anything, and billions of pounds are produced each year. EWG found:

Of all foods tested, chicken soup, infant formula, and ravioli had BPA levels of highest concern. Just one to three servings of foods with these concentrations could expose a woman or child to BPA at levels that caused serious adverse effects in animal tests.

Read more: BPA Danger may be greater from Tin Cans than Water Bottles